The body of Thomas Haskins was a day away from being cremated – and his closest kin didn’t even know he was dead.An Ohio prison inmate was charged today in the 1998 death of a Fort Wayne man.
Bernard McClaney, 36, is accused of fatally shooting Arthur “Artie” Rittenhouse III on April 1, 1998.
Rittenhouse’s mother told police she left home in the morning that day and returned in the afternoon to find her son dead, court documents said.
No arrests were made in the initial investigation. A Fort Wayne police detective was assigned to the case in June 2009, and further investigation led police to McClaney, court documents stated.
In an interview with detectives on Aug. 1, McClaney admitted to going to Rittenhouse’s home, near Weisser Park and Hamilton avenues, and shooting him. McClaney told police he had gone there with a stereo amplifier he wanted to trade for marijuana, court documents stated.
McClaney is serving a sentence at the Toledo Correctional Institute on unrelated convictions of aggravated robbery and voluntary manslaughter. He has been in prison since 1999 and is slated to be released as early as 2016, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
